Rejection of the Author: Why I Decided to Write Harmony Potter

So...this is something that has come together very quickly, and yet I have in a way been working towards for years now. I'm sure at some point I'll go into the finer details about how this project came to be, the evolution of it, and why I decided to take the plunge, but for today let's just get into the basics...by which I mean ramble for several thousand words!

First things first, for anyone who has just stumbled upon this, J. J. Hardy is NOT my real name. It is simply a pen name I am using for this series. I am an author and screenwriter with other more professional works in various states of development, and I'd rather keep this little passion project seperated. I am not trying to hide who I am; if you're reading this, you're probably one of the many friends or online followers I sent this link to via my other socials. I just needed to create some kind of a branding distinction. Think of J. J. Hardy as less of a real person and more of a character. A character that makes very queer stories about characters owned by a multi-billion dollar conglomerate and the reincarnation of Anita Bryant.

I will confirm three things about the real me: I am a transgender woman, I live in the United Kingdom and, growing up, I was a massive Harry Potter fan. The Philosopher's Stone was the first novel I ever read (well, my dad mostly read it to me, just to get me started), I grew up watching the movies multiple times in cinemas and at home, and I owned all sorts of merchandise such as a Gryffindor Quiddtch jumper, most of the various video games, and even a Barbie-like doll of Harry himself. I had a lot of things I loved growing up (most of them, I still love), but Potter was the one you simply could not escape growing up in the late 90s and early 00s. It was everywhere.

Fan art by Reilly Brown. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Of course, once the books and movies were done, the franchise has slowly found its way into its flop era. The Fantastic Beasts movies have become less and less profitable, The Cursed Child was little more than officially-licenced fan fiction (I hear the production itself is technically excellent, but that script? Yikes), and the only other media has been the occasional retcon tweet from the author that range from bizarre to lazy to just downright offensive. However, what has hurt the brand far more than any of the lacklustre material are the hateful actions of the creator herself, who (beyond the legal disclaimer at the bottom of this website) I will not refer to by name. She needs no introduction, anyway.

In the wake of all of this, the LGBTQIA+ community, my comrades that I have grown to love in the five years since I came out, were hurt. Really, really hurt. The queer Potter fandom was fierce and vocal, because we felt so seen by the themes we saw in those stories: it was about finding your true family, overcoming discrimination, and learning to become your best self. Maybe these weren't things the author intended. Maybe they were intentional at one time, and she has simply been warped into a new mindset by time, money, and the online rabbit hole of transphobic radicalisation. What matters is that's what we got out of them.

A lot of folks (mainly the cis ones) have tried to use the argument of Death of the Author to justified the continued enjoyment of the brand. The philosophy, coined by Roland Barthes and posits that art should be seperated from the artist, sadly doesn't really work in this case. Unlike so many other authors who, in retrospect, we have come to understand had some very questionable views on various minorities, the creator of Harry Potter is very much not dead. Not only that, she still makes money from every book, film, video game, novelty pen in the shape of a wand, whatever, that you buy. You can talk all you want about how you disagree with her views, but if you're still buying new Potter products, you're giving her the ammunition she needs to hold influence and continue spreading her poorly-researched, often incomprehensible vitriol.

Which brings us to the impetus of this project: Hogwarts Legacy, the upcoming open-world action RPG from Avalanche Software. Having watched several of the gameplay demos, it does genuinely look like the Potter game I dreamed of as a child, so no wonder many people are excited about it. Sadly though, as much as the developers have stressed that She Who Will Not Be Named has had no creative input on the video game, she will make money if it is a success. I have spoken to so many people (again, always cis) who have expressed interest in buying the game, even after explaining why doing so would only enable the author's views. Even suggesting more ethical consumption ideas (buy the game used, wait for a massive price drop, donate an equivalent sum to a trans charity, or even outright piracy) fall on deaf ears.

Hogwarts Legacy is owned by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Portkey Games, and Avalanche Software.

If the game is proven to be a critical and/or commercial success, we are going to be entering a period where there's going to be a lot more positive and sanitised discussion of the Potter brand coming, and that's going to prove hurtful to the morale and mental health of the LGBTQIA+ community, especially here in the UK where trans rights have become the main politcal football in the ever-depressing "culture war". As I'm writing this, we are perhaps entering the beginning of the end of the United Kingdom, all because the Conservative government is annoyed that Scotland doesn't hate trans people as much as they do.

With this ever-present sh*tstorm going on in the background of my life, I felt I needed to do something to counter-balance the narrative using my skills as a storyteller. I'd been toying away at some kind of revisionist Potter-inspired story for a few years now, but more recently I was inspired by the work of another trans artist: Vera Drew's The People's Joker. The film, which reimagines the DC Universe as a queer dystopia featuring a transfemme rendition of the Clown Prince of Crime, landed in hot water with Warner Bros. Discovery over copyright issues, which has so far limited its audience to a single premiere show at the Toronto International Film Festival, plus a few invite-only screenings. I hope the film eventually sees the public light of day and I can watch it, but even if it never does, it has already proved its point by its mere existence: parody is art, and copyright law is too often abused by the corporations that own our pop culture to silence that art.

Hearing Drew's story about using her childhood love of Batman to tell a personal story about her own gender identity journey, it finally clicked for me. Harry Potter deserves the same treatment, but even more urgently. What I propose is not Death of the Author, but more Rejection of the Author. It is impossible on both a critical and fisical level to seperate art from the artist, and immoral to ignore the effect our consumption has. At the same time, abandoning the art is also incredibly difficult for some, especially those whose memories and experiences are so tied up in it. What we need to do is cut the author out of the narrative, but not without putting her impact in the correct context before, in the politest way possible, throwing up our middle fingers and saying, 'It's our time now, baby!'

This was the impetus for the creation of Harmony Potter and the Rock of Immortality, a queer re-imagining of the story of The Philosopher's Stone. This is neither some quickie fanfic or a spiteful diatribe about how the series and its author suck. This is a full-length novel made with a love for the material and its fans, whilst also just so happening to send a clear message about why the original creator's views are simply wrong.

The pitch is quite simple: what if Harry Potter was a trans girl? What effect would that have on the Wizarding World? How would that change their upbringing, their education, and their friendships? That's not the end of the queer representation, though. Unlike the original material that hid its queer characters through silence or problematic metaphors, the world of Harmony Potter is full of characters from all corners of the rainbow. I mean, some characters just have to be cis and/or hetero, there has to be some conflict, but it's just a more modern and honest reflection of our real world. Queer people exist, and they tend to flock to each other, often before they fully know themselves.

Moreover, this isn't simply a find-and-replace job in the vein of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The bones of The Philosopher's Stone remains intact, right down to the structuring of the chapters, but it's been heavily refurbished and repurposed. You will see familiar events, some of which play out essentially as you remember, whilst others...less so. The simple change of the protagonist's identity certainly has a butterfly effect on the entire mythos, but the changes go far beyond a gender flip, and stretch further back than even that night at Godric's Hollow. Think of the logic of Harmony Potter as something akin to the Kelvin timeline in Star Trek: some things change, some things stay the same, so don't think you know where the story is going.

So how is this going to work, you may be asking? How do I read this? Do I have to buy it? How is this even legal? Well, you've read this far, so let's get to the brass tax.

Harmony Potter and the Rock of Immortality (and any future installments, should I prove so lucky) will be avaliable completely for free. I will be self-publishing the book here via this website, but also on a few different fan fiction websites to help spread the word. It will be released in installments, probably a few chapters at a time, starting on 10th February 2023. Yes, that is indeed the same release date as Hogwarts Legacy. It's called marketing synergy, and I'm going to take full advantage.

I am releasing it for free for two reasons. The first, and most obvious, is that I don't want to get sued. I cannot monetise a book containing copyrighted characters and, given the situation with The People's Joker, the parody argument is unlikely to win out even if it is morally correct. In all honesty, if the copyright holders do notice me and try to take me on, I see that as a win. I know the whole "there's no such thing as bad publicity" argument doesn't always track, but given Warner Bros. Discovery is already in some hot water for shutting down another trans reinterpretation of one of their properties, it'd look as bad for them as it would for me.

The second reason comes not from laws or logic, but from the heart: I want to make this a free resource. I wrote this novel not to make money, but to process my own grief for the franchise I grew up loving, as did countless thousands of queer folk of all ages around the world. This whole thing was a labour of love, and whilst it was painful at times to get through, I think what I've ended up with will help heal those wounds that are still so fresh for many of us.

All that said, writing does take a lot of time and effort, so if you do want to show your appreciation through the means of capitalism, you can do this. I've set up a Ko-Fi page where you can donate and help support me in continuing to write my gay little adventures. Give as much or as little as you want, but if you've read the book and enjoyed it and want to donate, may I suggest, I don't know, the average price of a paperback novel? *wink* *wink*

I know some other folks in the trans community won't agree with what I've done here, and that's fine. I understand there's a lot of people who want to see the Potter brand firmly die, and not give anymore undue attention to its problematic matriarch. However, given how ingrained the franchise has become in our pop culture, I don't think that's ever going to happen. My thinking is: if it's going to stick around whether we like it or not, why not have some fun with it? Why not take this tragic circumstance and turn it into an opportunity to spread queer joy and gender euphoria? Yeah, it'll piss off some people, but hopefully most of those will be the exact kind of people I want to piss off. To be honest, I hope Lady Vulvamort in some way acknowledges or attacks me, because if she were smart, she'd simply ignore me...but she's picked fights over things way more petty than this.

So come 10th February, get ready to be re-introduced to your favourite characters as you've never seen them, relive your favourite moments from a new perspective, and start speculating on which of your favourite slashfic ships will end up coming true (but please, keep it PG. All of these kids are underage! We don't need more excuses for right-wingers to claim queerness is inherently sexualised).